I just love these two!

Sometimes Strider’s words can be so sweet… and sometimes so funny.  And sometimes all within the same 10 seconds!  The other day, he looked at me and said, “When I’m a man, I want to find a wife like you.”  And then after a short pause, he said, “I wish I had fur like Daddy.”

Rayna loves to run after Strider and call him “boy!  boy!”  She only calls him Strider when I tell her too… If it’s up to her, it’s strictly boy!

The other day I sat with Strider and Rayna together on the couch.  Strider got in real close to Rayna’s face and said so sweetly, “Rayna, you’re so cute.  You can’t see yourself, but you’re really cute!”  I put my hand on the side of Strider’s face and told him he was being so nice. And then Rayna took her little hand and put it on the other side of his face and said in a soft little voice, “Boy.”  That was as close as she could get to telling him “I love you Strider!”

Strider has a whole little “routine” down that he loves to regale.  He and Pete have memorized (from watching it so many times!) a bit that Bill Gaither and Mark Lowry do together.  It’s a full song with lots of comments thrown in – and Strider does it with the same exact accents and facial expressions that Bill and Mark have… it’s hilarious.  So now Mark Lowry is his all-time favorite, most funny person EVER.  (Strider’s also in what I call the “superlative phase” right now – everything is the best thing in the “whole wide world!”)

When I sit down on the floor, or anywhere else deemed accessible by my children, I get very different response from each of them.  Rayna immediately runs at me with her thumb in her mouth and her hand raised to grab my hair, wanting some snuggly time.  Strider immediately runs over and essentially tries to tackle me, push me over, or some other rough thing.  Quite the difference between the boy and girl!

The other day we read a poem in which a boy was talking to the sun, essentially asking him where he had gone during the nighttime.  The sun then responds that he was on the other side of the world, etc.  Strider was perplexed by this dialogue, and then decided HE should try to talk to the sun.  So he ran over and opened the front door.  I heard him lean out and say, in a very “cool” voice, “Hey, sun.  What s’up?”   After a minute he returned to me with a disappointed face and said, “It didn’t work”

 One of Rayna’s favorite words is “exciting!”  She says it when she’s anticipating something really cool, and she always says it with the same face:  eyebrows raised, eyes squinty, big grin.  Sometimes it’s followed by “fun!” in the same high-pitched, dramatic fashion.  She knows what she likes!